The Essential Blake

by Blake, William; Kunitz, Stanley

• ISBN13: 9780880015028
• ISBN10: 0880015020
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-05-01
• Publisher: Ecco Pr

Summary

Blake speaks more directly to us, anticipating the issues, conflicts, and anxieties of the modern world, than any of his contemporaries. it could be argued that he dared, in fact, to be the first modern poet.Above all, Blake teaches us that the imagination is a portion of the divine principle, that "Energy is Eternal Delight," and that "everything that lives is Holy." Human liberty and imagination have never been better served.

Excerpts

Songs of Innocence

Introduction

Piping down the valleys wild,

Piping songs of pleasant glee,

On a cloud I saw a child,

And he laughing said to me:

"Pipe a song about a Lamb!"

So I piped with merry chear.

"Piper, pipe that song again;"

So I piped- he wept to hear.

"Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;

Sing thy songs of happy chear:"

So I sung the same again,

While he wept with joy to hear.

"Piper, sit thee down and write

In a book, that all may read."

So he vanish'd from my sight,

And I pluck'd a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,

And I stain'd the water dear,

And I wrote my happy songs

Every child may joy to hear.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Essential Blake by William Blake Copyright © 2003 by William Blake
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.